The Killing Of A Sacred Deer is certainly a Yorgos Lanthimos film, but it’s one that has been run through a Yorgos Lanthimos generator. So not only are we presented with a drama of typically accentuated reality and absurdly grotesque situations, we are given it twice over as well. In this folding over, the meaning which usually cuts clearly through the mordant absurdity, is lost to the increased stylistic layering. In effect this leaves behind two hours of improbable misery…

At once a tender and honest tale that wraps you up in the various universal struggles of adolescence. The 400 Blows will always be a lasting illustration of the pitiless purgatory that developmental listlessness invariably drags everyone into at one point or another.

As provocation it succeeds unrepentantly and there’s always something to be said of that, but as a satire it falters. The critiques of consumerism and communism are there and are at times brilliantly lampooned, but it’s never quite natural. There’s always a forceful hand looming in this deceptively playful farce that is there to direct you. A push that tells you what to feel, a shove that tells you what to think. For a film so blatant and transgressive in…